Quotes About The New Year

I am a writer, and in my years of studying other writers, I have grown to love quotes about every subject conceivable. Let's look at what others have said about the New Year.

 
"One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things."
- John Burroughs

"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man."
- Benjamin Franklin

"A happy New Year! Grant that I
May bring no tear to any eye
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I've played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year."
- Edgar Guest

* "Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."
- Thomas Mann

* "I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me."
- Anaïs Nin

* "We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."
- Edith Lovejoy Pierce

* "Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer."
- Sir Walter Scott

* "It wouldn't be New Year's if I didn't have regrets."
- William Thomas

* "New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual."
- Mark Twain

* "Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever."
- Mark Twain

* "A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it."
- Mark Twain, speech in New York City, 31 March 1885

* "New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions."
- Mark Twain

* "We meet today To thank Thee for the era done, And Thee for the opening one." - John Greenleaf Whittier

* "Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account."
- Oscar Wilde

* It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I didn’t have regrets. -William Thomas

* An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. -Bill Vaughan

2010-2011 April Lorier Perspective

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11